MQA, the embattled U.K. audio technology company founded by Bob Stuart, has a new owner in Canada-based Lenbrook, the parent company of Bluesound, NAD, and PSB Speakers. Financial details haven’t been revealed, but Lenbrook says it has acquired all MQA assets, including the company’s two key pieces of intellectual property — the MQA and SCL-6 audio codecs.
Recommended Videos The MQA codec is considered by some to offer many of the benefits of lossless, hi-res audio codecs like FLAC, but with smaller file sizes, improved audio quality, and some additional features like being able to visually confirm that the song you’re listening to is the version its creator wanted you to hear. However, unlike FLAC, which is open source and royalty-free, MQA is proprietary, and any entity that wants to use MQA must pay a licensing fee.
Lenbrook’s substantial investments in MQA support across its Bluesound portfolio of products , combined with Tidal’s efforts to reduce its reliance on MQA, makes the acquisition something of a necessity for Lenbrook. Controlling MQA’s assets lets it preserve or negotiate any of the more than 120 existing MQA licensing deals, which could provide much-needed stability for Lenbrook and the greater MQA ecosystem.
To keep things moving from a technical standpoint, Lenbrook says it’s retaining a core group of MQA’s engineers, developers, and sales and marketing team members. Lenbrook only mentioned one of these employees by name: Andy Dowell, previously the head of licensing for MQA. Notably absent from the announcement was any mention of Stuart, MQA’s founder.
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